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Phil wrote:
'Where does Verizon deliver this? Only in cities where it can get permission to offer the entire bundle of services. Cable television is the most profitable service and the toughest one to get approved. The local cable monopoly tends to own local politicians and when Verizon comes knocking and asks to launch its TV service, those politicians often say "We don't think competition would be good for our constituents."'
At least some of the local politicians are in the pockets of consumers who don't want Verizon to have any more monopoly than they already do until they learn to fix phone lines.
If you need a service call from Verizon, they ask you to tell them 3 or 4 4-hour periods when you'll be home, then they don't show up for any of them, and when they finally do show up at some randomly chosen time, they don't have access to the phone closet they need to fix your problem.
There do seem to be people in other parts of the world who need to think about it if you ...

COST OF BILLING
If I had been writing that article, I would have emphasized more the
high cost of the current billing system.
When I was working in medical computing (the early 1980's), a number
people threw around was that every item on a patients bill cost $7
just for the billing. So those $7.50 bandaids people got billed for
when they went to the Emergency Room were in fact correctly priced.
I'm sure the number is different now. I would guess higher, for
reasons you discuss.
This is related to what your physician reviewers said about how much
physician time is spent on billing, but physicians are a small part of
the cost of third-party billing.
PATIENTS AS CONSUMERS
One point that nobody seems to make when talking about the idea of
patients as consumers is that nobody who actually provides medical
services actually has any idea how much they cost the patient. So
even if you wanted to have tests done only if they had a reasonable
chance of finding som...